[eli5] how do things like rabies only have a near 100% fatality rate once symptoms set in?

Question

If we can treat it before symptoms what different after symptoms start showing?

In: 11

Answer 1

Rabies virus doesn’t do anything until it reaches your brain. It travels along nerves from the site of a dog bite or bat bite and works its way up. You only show symptoms when it messes with the neurons in your brain. Unfortunately, modern medicine has not discovered any suitable curative drug that can attentuate and reverse all the damage rabies does. The best we can do is vaccinate you and give you antibodies after a suspected rabid dog/bat bite and hope that the immune system kills off 100% of the rabies virus before it travels to the brain.